Industry insider: Insurers skeptical that ObamaCare website will be ready by December 1st

posted at 4:41 pm on November 5, 2013 by Allahpundit

A new dispatch from health-industry consultant Bob Laszewski, who’s one of the many millions to have discovered recently that he can’t keep a plan he liked a lot. HHS is a black box on the progress of the website so we’re forced to rely on anecdotes, but there’s no reason to think Laszewski’s sources are unrepresentative. His criticisms of the site have been borne out so far. And if he’s right that December 1st seems unlikely as a target date to debut the new and improved Healthcare.gov, Obama’s got a major problem.

Marilyn Tavenner, the head of CMS, told a Senate panel full of nervous Democrats today that “by the end of November the experience on the site will be smooth for the vast majority of users.” We’ll see.

Enrollments continue to trickle in. Health plans, with the kind of market share that would have to sign-up 100,000 to 200,000 people for the administration to hit its goal of 7 million people, are generally reporting they have enrolled only about 100 – 200 people over the first 35 days via Healthcare.gov…

Health plans are separately enrolling more people on their own sites and through their call centers in great part because of all of the cancellation letters they have recently sent out. Existing customers worried about facing a lapse in coverage are calling in. Many health plans are offering the “early renewal option” to these cancelled customers, which lets people keep their plan but only until December of 2014. I continue to hear that an overwhelming number of existing customers are opting to keep their current plan versus taking an Obamacare compliant plan from the carrier––an interesting outcome given that so many of these plans are said to be “substandard.”…

The Obama administration finally seems to have a strong group of experienced managers in charge of fixing Healthcare.gov. I don’t mean to pile anymore bad news on them then they already have. But I also have to report that the confidence that this can all get fixed by December 1 is not high among the people on the other end of those 834 transactions.

“834 transactions” refers to the information that’s sent from Healthcare.gov to an insurance company after someone signs up for a plan on the website. The biggest problem with the site right now, even more than the endless glitches in trying to create an account, is that the information being forwarded to insurers in the 834 process is often garbled or incomplete. Until that back-end part is fixed, the White House can’t fix the front end to make it easier for people to sign up; otherwise garbled enrollments will start flooding in to insurers and they’ll have to sort out the resulting mess.

The significance of December 1st is that it’s just two weeks before the December 15th deadline for people to enroll if they want their coverage to begin on January 1 next year. If the site’s still buggy at that point, the big post-Thanksgiving surge in enrollments by healthy people that the White House is counting on will be all but impossible, which means insurers will start next year with lots of sick people newly enrolled and few healthy ones to help cover their cost. It also means that the millions who have had their coverage dropped are at risk of starting the year without insurance because they can’t get the damned website to work long enough for them to sign up. The “early renewal option” Laszewski mentions will solve that problem for some people, but not every insurer will offer it. Crunch time for The One, then: What does he do on December 1st if we’re still stuck in 404 hell? Allow insurers to bring back plans that have been canceled under the new ObamaCare regs? Extend the enrollment deadline next year from March 31st to some later date, which raises the risk of adverse selection problems for insurers? Delay the entire law until HHS gets its act together? Nothing but bad options here as far as the eye can see. And lest you doubt that Laszewski’s sources are right to be skeptical about December 1st, ask yourself why Obama would be wasting valuable “sign up!” cheerleading time this month on unrelated crap if he didn’t agree. He knows it won’t be ready soon. No sense spending more time and political capital on it until it is.

While we’re waiting for the “tech surge” to work miracles, enjoy this new report from the AP about the White House begging for help from the same industry they’ve spent the last few weeks scapegoating to excuse Obama’s big “if you like your plan” lie. Yesterday’s spin: We had to pass ObamaCare to protect the public from “bad apple” insurance companies and their “cut-rate” plans. Today’s spin: Help us, insurance companies, you’re our only hope.

The White House is asking insurance companies to explain to Americans the cancellation letters they’re receiving in the mail.

President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, met Tuesday with CEOs from some of the largest health insurers. The White House says McDonough updated the CEOs on fixes to healthcare.gov and problems with enrollment data sent electronically to insurers. McDonough also solicited input on whether the system is getting better.

The White House says McDonough urged insurance companies to “ramp up communication and education efforts” to those who have lost their insurance.

Good luck educating someone on the glories of ObamaCare when you’ve just told him he’s being booted from an affordable plan he liked to one that’s more “comprehensive” than he needs and more expensive than he can manage. In fact, having seen photos of various cancellation notices people have received, I note that they almost uniformly mention that the plan’s cancellation is due to the Affordable Care Act. They’d have no strong incentive to do that if they thought people would be happy about being “upgraded” to a new plan on the exchanges; if anything, they’d want to downplay the new law’s role in all this and treat it as some sort of initiative undertaken by the company itself to help its customers seek better, more affordable coverage. But they know how the cancellation notice will be received so they’re careful to blame the ACA for it, not themselves. No one wants to hold the hot potato.

Via the Corner, here’s Jim Moran wondering if Obama’s big lie maybe wasn’t just “a little hyperbole” he engaged in a few hundred times because he was super-excited about America’s new health-care regime or something. This must be the first time a Democrat’s ever used Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech as a yardstick for mild, unfortunate, yet well-meaning exaggerations. Exit question: Are we really going to get the ObamaCare enrollment numbers next week? Or are we going to get a big hash that does nothing to tell us how many people have enrolled in the exchanges versus how many have enrolled in Medicaid?

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I would say that people who are healthy and did not visit a doctor on a regular basis will probably go bare for a year and see what 2015 holds.

People like me who are expensive medication are on HelathCare.gov everyday trying to get something done. We would get a subsidy but now the plans are complicated and no one can answer my question on if my expensive medication would be covered. Maybe I should call Obama, he seems to have an answer for everything. /s

Actually – if I don’t have insurance I could get assistance to get my medication free……
That is the route I am pursuing.

Exit question: Are we really going to get the ObamaCare enrollment numbers next week? Or are we going to get a big hash that does nothing to tell us how many people have enrolled in the exchanges versus how many have enrolled in Medicaid?

Schad – I agree with you wholeheartedly, everything you’ve said over the last week has been spot on regarding this – but – I am withholding my ire towards the R’s until November 15th and then again on December 1. Here’s why – I think it’s in their best interests to hold back comments and let this wine “breathe”. Let it sink in with the voters (smart and stupid). On November 15th, when the numbers are supposed to be reported, they can start to tee off on the debacle with full force. Then on December 1, when it crashes (and it will), begin the parade of commercials covering the last 5 years of lies to run for the next six months. They should empty the bank at the RNC on this. Done correctly, and I know that’s a huge risk for us, it would be a blowout next November.

It wouldn’t matter so much that the government can’t find its butt with both hands, except for the fact there are millions of people put in danger of losing access to needed healthcare and medications. Real people are being hurt by these lies, spin and romanticized visions of technocracy gone wild. Plato never actually imagined for a moment that a population would be stupid enough to actually vote in favor of beneficent philosopher-kings as tyrant rulers.

The Congress needs to pass a law turning the clock on health insurance back to June 2013 or earlier, and get rid of this Obama-crisis. My own insurance is cancelled, but I at least don’t have chronic health problems. I’ve for people working for me who are in a panic, totally needlessly.

There is absolutely no way that healthcare.gov will be SECURE by Dec 1, even if it is functioning more smoothly. Security testing takes several weeks alone, and can only properly be done AFTER all functionality fixes have been applied. I hope someone in Congress picks up on this distinction. A (mostly) functioning site on Dec. 1 is necessarily an INSECURE site.

If the site is poorly designed and does not scale well, as many of us suppose, then this is not something you can simply “fix” or “patch”, no matter how much money you throw at it.

The best analogy I can think of is that the original, October 1 version of Healthcare.gov is a 4-person Cessna which the government tried to jam 400 people into, thinking it was a 747 — as a result, the plane went nowhere, wouldn’t take off, and its landing gear collapsed under the weight of so many people. You can’t add parts to the Cessna to make it a 747 — you have to redesign and rebuild the plane from the ground up.

Attaching a JATO to the Cessna might make it move with 400 people clinging to it, but you don’t want to be around to clean up THAT mess.

I work in web-development industry and I have a solid amount of experience in insurance software development and I can flatly GUARANTEE you the site won’t be ready by Dec. 1 or Jan.1 or probably even March 1. Not unless you vastly reduce the feature set. It isn’t a matter of simply ‘fixing problems.’

It is a matter of maintaining data integrity, API signatures and a host of other buzzwordy processes to make sure that changes in the architecture don’t have downstream implications. If we had a thousand healthcare companies working on a certain set of definitions you can’t just change those now.

I can’t even imagine how complicated a system would have to be to encompass all healthcare nationwide but I know that the regression testing for even simple changes would take a LONG time. Major architectural changes are laughably outside the realm of things that can be accomplished on a short timescale.

If the site is poorly designed and does not scale well, as many of us suppose, then this is not something you can simply “fix” or “patch”, no matter how much money you throw at it.

It’s not really the site that’s poorly designed it’s the idea that you can make a site that centralizes the American health insurance marketplace and the federal health programs and the IRS and HHS databases.

I’ve tried this on other threads – just can’t seem to get a substantive response from anyone.
Yes…there have been and are problems with the ACA roll out here.
Obama’s approval rating has taken a hit.
So…now what?

I work in web-development industry and I have a solid amount of experience in insurance software development and I can flatly GUARANTEE you the site won’t be ready by Dec. 1 or Jan.1 or probably even March 1. Not unless you vastly reduce the feature set. It isn’t a matter of simply ‘fixing problems.’

I work for as a STE for a large company designing medical records and billing software and I agree. I would add that it’s IMPOSSIBLE to reduce the feature set because it would require going back to congress and changing the law.

Exit question: Are we really going to get the ObamaCare enrollment numbers next week? Or are we going to get a big hash that does nothing to tell us how many people have enrolled in the exchanges versus how many have enrolled in Medicaid?

I work in web-development industry and I have a solid amount of experience in insurance software development and I can flatly GUARANTEE you the site won’t be ready by Dec. 1 or Jan.1 or probably even March 1. Not unless you vastly reduce the feature set. It isn’t a matter of simply ‘fixing problems.’

eldernos on November 5, 2013 at 5:00 PM

I work for as a STE for a large company designing medical records and billing software and I agree. I would add that it’s IMPOSSIBLE to reduce the feature set because it would require going back to congress and changing the law.

kcewa on November 5, 2013 at 5:09 PM

No need to go to Congress. Field Marshal Sebelius and the REB have made massive changes to Obamacare, and hundreds of small changes. In addition, there are hundreds of places in the original bill where it says “the Secretary shall set”, or decide, or regulate, etc.

The “keep your doctor” problem that the REB has is due to a change made by Sebelius which contradicted the original Obamacare bill.

And lest you doubt that Laszewski’s sources are right to be skeptical about December 1st, ask yourself why Obama would be wasting valuable “sign up!” cheerleading time this month on unrelated crap if he didn’t agree. He knows it won’t be ready soon. No sense spending more time and political capital on it until it is.

..hey, AP, like President Stool sample knew what the crap he was doing? The guy has been clueless since day one. There’s no strategy; there never has been a strategy. Just some child running around playing POTUS. Ummm, you know, like the oil spill, dithering in Afghanistan, pivoting to handle the economy, yada yada yada.

Naw, mate, turd-bucket has been lost in space and will continue to be so for the duration.

I’ve tried this on other threads – just can’t seem to get a substantive response from anyone.
Yes…there have been and are problems with the ACA roll out here.
Obama’s approval rating has taken a hit.
So…now what?

verbaluce on November 5, 2013 at 5:07 PM

The GOP would have been wise to come together on an outline of a replacement plan a long time ago — something to sell besides repeal of OCare.

Nonetheless, the mess is here. Delaying the whole law will only help with the website problems, not the underlying problem of sticker shock and plan cancellations. If the Dems won’t be serious about scrapping OCare and starting over (and they won’t), then the pain is on and it will be enoromous.

My expectation is that the “website” will not be fixed by December 1st.

I’m betting that the real issue is the number of government agency systems that need to be accessed within a web session in order to get the information to determine what each individual qualifies for. For example, the following systems need to be queried: DOD, Social Security, VA, IRS, Peace Corps, etc…

Is anyone convinced that each and every one of these systems is capable of returning all of the requested information for each and every request in real time?

I’m not. I’m betting that more than one of these systems requires extensive upgrades, rewrites, or additional interfaces or hardware in order to scale to the required level of responsiveness.

Exit question: Are we really going to get the ObamaCare enrollment numbers next week? Or are we going to get a big hash that does nothing to tell us how many people have enrolled in the exchanges versus how many have enrolled in Medicaid?
I think we all know the answer to that.

KCB on November 5, 2013 at 4:53 PM

Agree. It’ll be one humongous obfuscation.

Predicting this Epic ClusterFarkNado Fail is getting too easy.

At least we now know what Obama was like the night before he had a term paper due in college :

Disorganized, half-finished, incoherent and panicked. At that point he’d smoke another one to get his head clear, stay up all night partying, then get an affirmative action extension when the paper was due in class.

Exit question: Are we really going to get the ObamaCare enrollment numbers next week? Or are we going to get a big hash that does nothing to tell us how many people have enrolled in the exchanges versus how many have enrolled in Medicaid?

I’ve tried this on other threads – just can’t seem to get a substantive response from anyone.
Yes…there have been and are problems with the ACA roll out here.
Obama’s approval rating has taken a hit.
So…now what?

verbaluce on November 5, 2013 at 5:07 PM

Mid term elections, I suppose.

But the damage is done. $12K-$20K out of pocket for a few years taken directly from grocery, education, and/or retirement savings forcing a further sharp decline of the middle class (combined with the new normal of 7+% unemployment), continue blaming the insurance industry for obeying your law, and then single payer here we come.

The GOP would have been wise to come together on an outline of a replacement plan a long time ago — something to sell besides repeal of OCare.

Bitter Clinger on November 5, 2013 at 5:16 PM

Um, what? They had a ton of proposals on how to revamp healthcare to make it more affordable and help those who don’t have access receive the care they need. Takes 2 seconds with help from my friend Google to find plenty of examples.

All of which would truly have allowed people who liked their plans keep it, and probably see a reduction in cost. As well as see those without insurance get something affordable. But all of those failed to have a Democrat sponsor it, so it was ignored by everyone.

I’ll bet Verbowelsloose doesn’t get it. He probably wants to quit because posting here on Hot Gas is so-o-o-o-o-o hard.

The War Planner on November 5, 2013 at 5:22 PM

verbaluce is a he? Crap I loaded pearl necklace for him, her on an earlier thread and he, she never thanked me for the tune. I figured he, she at the time, deserved a reward for her, his endless fluffing of this disaster. Now I know why he, she won’t talk to me. Sorry verbaluce. I’d take it all back if I had only known. Honest.

I would recommend hoarding cash. That is if you’re healthy. Key here is CASH. Y’know the old tymie barter thing.
Other than that, Hope you stay employed and Hope your employer has the gumption to fight for you.

Exit question: Are we really going to get the ObamaCare enrollment numbers next week? Or are we going to get a big hash that does nothing to tell us how many people have enrolled in the exchanges versus how many have enrolled in Medicaid?

The secrecy about these easily available statistics stinks of corruption. Why should they be allowed to package these number for political purposes?

I fully expect that CMS will try to be clever and aggregate the data in such a way as to hide the deficiencies and to mislead. Remember the whole immeasurable meaningless “saved or created jobs” nonsense? Expect something along those lines, only more vacuous.

I will bet you that they will count any application STARTED in October as an October ENROLLMENT, as long as the the enrollment gets completed by mid-November. AND, they will not tell anybody about this counting detail (i.e., lie) (unless someone in Congress presses them on this specific issue).

I also would not put it past CMS to commit outright fraud. For example, since the site requires you to submit your information upfront just to browse, I can imagine that individuals who just wanted to browse find themselves magically enrolled in the most common plan for their characteristics. There is absolutely no way for such individuals to refute that they did not complete enrollment, but were just browsing. Also, I don’t see anything preventing CMS from all kinds of double-counting. Remember how they double-counted the $716 billion from Medicare as counting for both Medicare AND Obamacare? And that was done in the wide open. Imagine the tales they will spin will data that cannot be easily verfied.

I’ve tried this on other threads – just can’t seem to get a substantive response from anyone.
Yes…there have been and are problems with the ACA roll out here.
Obama’s approval rating has taken a hit.
So…now what?

verbaluce on November 5, 2013 at 5:07 PM

The GOP would have been wise to come together on an outline of a replacement plan a long time ago — something to sell besides repeal of OCare and starting over (and they won’t), then the pain is on and it will be enoromous.
Bitter Clinger on November 5, 2013 at 5:16 PM

Right, but they didn’t – or couldn’t, really.
But will they now get permission from the right to step in and participate? Don’t forget that Obama was able to move fwd with the ACA by ignoring the demands of the left.
The GOP has an opp here to step up with something besides ‘NO’.
I do think that’s what we’re gonna see.
As much as they’re shouting, they seem pretty quiet.
Doing some thinking, maybe.

I’ve tried this on other threads – just can’t seem to get a substantive response from anyone.
Yes…there have been and are problems with the ACA roll out here.
Obama’s approval rating has taken a hit.
So…now what?

verbaluce on November 5, 2013 at 5:07 PM

The GOP would have been wise to come together on an outline of a replacement plan a long time ago — something to sell besides repeal of OCare.

Nonetheless, the mess is here. Delaying the whole law will only help with the website problems, not the underlying problem of sticker shock and plan cancellations. If the Dems won’t be serious about scrapping OCare and starting over (and they won’t), then the pain is on and it will be enoromous.

Bitter Clinger on November 5, 2013 at 5:16 PM

Nothing personal poster, but this is a tiresome narrative. Democratics and trolls push the “where’s your plan” meme to derail Republicans. Why should we come up with a monster big-government plan as equally repulsive as Obamacare to replace it?

What we had before Obamacare is better than Obamacare, so job one should be going back to ‘before Obamacare’. If there’s a rattlesnake in your tent first get rid of the rattlesnake.

There are several Republican small-government plans to fix some MINOR problems in our healthcare delivery and insurance business. Here’s just two of them:

I would recommend hoarding cash. That is if you’re healthy. Key here is CASH. Y’know the old tymie barter thing.
Other than that, Hope you stay employed and Hope your employer has the gumption to fight for you.

That’s all I got.

seesalrun2 on November 5, 2013 at 5:32 PM

But any cash that is sitting idle becomes worth less with each passing day.

That’s part of the “erosion of the middle class” bit that he voted for and heartily endorses. Savers (people who make good economic choices, eg health insurance) are damaged. Spenders (people who make poor economic choices, eg HBO and iphones instead) are rewarded.

See Obama’s mortgage assistance program for actual personal examples.

Buy what you could afford? Sucker.

Overextend yourself? Here, have some of their money as a reward for making poor choices.

The added benefit? Inflation makes it easier to pay off the house you couldn’t afford or credit card bills you ran up, all while decreasing the actual value of dollars the smart savers were tucking away for retirement.

Again, they won, and working middle class Americans The Haves will be made to suffer. They’re getting exactly what they want.

I’ve tried this on other threads – just can’t seem to get a substantive response from anyone.
Yes…there have been and are problems with the ACA roll out here.
Obama’s approval rating has taken a hit.
So…now what?

verbaluce on November 5, 2013 at 5:07 PM

Step 1: Immediate repeal of Obamacare before more damage is done.

Step 2: Real healthcare reform is ironically more urgent now
That Obamacare has exacerbated existing problems.

Republicans must propose a reform plan of their own, centered around rolling back the insane policies that got us into this mess in the first place: this means a lot of things, but primarily

a). Rollback every requirement of the form “insurers must cover X”. EVERY such requirement forbids me, the consumer, with purchasing health insurance from someone who isn’t selling X.

b). Eliminate all mandates/incentives for people who would otherwise not be involved in my healthcare to get involved. This means removing the tax break given to employers for buying their employees’ health insurance for them. I’ll shop for my care myself, thank you very much. OR, let them get the break, but ONLY if they give the employee the option of putting the money into an HSA instead, AND SIMULTANEOUSLY reform HSA rules so that they are available to everyone, and can be used to pay premiums for health insurance (either a group employer or a plan on the individual market – and no restrictions on what counts as a “plan” – any use of the money for any medical expense is allowed.

This also means eliminating guaranteed issue: people who are sick need enough to need a lot of financial help are not in that situation because of insurers, so if we are going to subsidize it, we should do it directly. HOWEVER, NO single payer, not ANY kind of government involvement in reimbursement for health expenses, except to the very limited extent that

A: someone who is overwhelmed by medical expenses consuming a high portion of their income gets an additional tax break or even tax credit.

B: in very extreme cases, for very poor people, contributions to some kind of HSA from the government might be in order. Probably the best way to do that would be to simply use some of the money currently going into Medicaid.

Speaking of entitlements, these need to be indexed to general inflation, both to keep entitlements themselves from getting out of hand, and also to stop driving prices up in the market in general. Ideally these programs could be converted into some kind of HSA or MSA contribution over time.

That’s it for now, but of course there is all kinds of stuff I could add like tort reform, etc.

It’s not good to propose compromises in the initial offer, but as they try to pass the thing, any compromises should involve the amount of the contributions the government makes to sick people, NOT compromises in the amount of deregulation needed.

Because these geniuses are trying to integrate the obamacare into CMSs medicare computer system, they have now, in typical ignorant librul fashion, bolluxed up the medicare system too. Good luck on prescriptions that have to go through that system. All over the government, the system is starting to sieze up.

Remember how Harry Reid / Obama won’t pass a budget so that the massive and highly controversial “stimulus” of 2009 can be continually, repeatedly, and annually spent (we’re up to around $5 trillion now, btw) each year since?

Really? NOt ready by Dec. 1? Heck, I said that as soon as the person foolish enough to make that promise made it. There is no way something that needs far more testing and security work can be “fixed” in 6-8 weeks.

This is a catastrophe of huge proportions. Sebelius couldn’t deliver IT in Kansas and she can’t deliver it here. Just because she says she told people she wanted their A team, doesn’t me she got it nor does it mean she has a clue as to what it takes to make something of this magnitude work. Then again, I don’t think anyone has EVER tried to code something of this magnitude ever.

A fool from the very top to the bottom.

Interesting – the web page designer refused to work on it. ANd I’ll bet, even if asked, the Silicon Valley gurus wouldn’t have touched it either. No way.

For the sake of our nation, I hope it never works. This will force us to regroup. In the meantime, those dumped by insurance cos need to get back on, with last year’s coverage – not the massive one size fits all.

I’ve tried this on other threads – just can’t seem to get a substantive response from anyone.
Yes…there have been and are problems with the ACA roll out here.
Obama’s approval rating has taken a hit.
So…now what?

verbaluce on November 5, 2013 at 5:07 PM

Your arrogant, incompetent asses kicked to the curb one year from today.

can’t even imagine how complicated a system would have to be to encompass all healthcare nationwide but I know that the regression testing for even simple changes would take a LONG time. Major architectural changes are laughably outside the realm of things that can be accomplished on a short timescale.

Period.

eldernos on November 5, 2013 at 5:00 PM

I couldn’t agree with you more on this. Having developed large scale database applications in the 1980s and 1990s, then directed the development of a commercial CRM program, and the rebuilding of a secure 5,000 page intranet/internet site – the people yacking about “fixing” this site are clueless what goes into the design stage and testing of the code and inter-program data handling.

Pile on top of that the realities of doing a “surge” of new programmers and analysts into the mix and you are certain to muck things up in more unexpected ways. I recommend they read “The Mythical Man-Month” when they are done with “Web Sites for Dummies”.

I wonder how well the code was documented along the way so people now can figure out what large sections of code might even be doing? Fixing 5MM lines of code – some original by the geniuses at CGI and some cut and pasted from other sites – is almost doomed to failure or at best a never ending drip, drip, drip of problems.

Don’t forget that Obama was able to move fwd with the ACA by ignoring the demands of the left.

verbaluce on November 5, 2013 at 5:46 PM

Wipe your chin. That’s disgusting.

So…now what?

verbaluce on November 5, 2013 at 5:07 PM

I suspect what happens next for me will be different than you (It’s a geography thing, I live on earth)
What I will be doing is trying very hard to not get sick. With the wonderful new and improved health insurance your boyfriend forced upon me, any major illness or hospital requirement by myself or my wife may well mean bankruptcy and losing our house. Higher premiums, 2x deductible and 2x out of pocket expense. You can try and spin this colossal clusterfark all you want, it won’t change the facts. Many millions (that’s a large number, I know math is not your strong suit) more are in the same boat. So what happens next is anybody’s guess, but you can bet it will include millions of rightfully pissed off people.

Pile on top of that the realities of doing a “surge” of new programmers and analysts into the mix and you are certain to muck things up in more unexpected ways. I recommend they read “The Mythical Man-Month” when they are done with “Web Sites for Dummies”.

in_awe on November 5, 2013 at 8:12 PM

Haven’t you ever heard of the “Nine Good Women” fix for the “Baby in One Month” problem???

/sarc>

Seriously, it is obvious that the “web site” suffers from major foundational flaws which will prevent it from becoming functional and safe to use. Until we see a total commitment to “start over and do it right,” there is no chance that the web site will EVER be “working” by any ordinary definition of what a working web site is.

Without a clear, transparent, and PUBLIC charter approved by everyone and blessed by ALL of Congress, a design freeze, a completely new architecture, a step-by-step-with-verification implementation plan, and competent technical leadership, this pig can never fly.

The major error which doomed Obamacare was the decision to lock Republicans and most Democrats out of the debate over the law, and to hide the law in order to prevent a public vetting.This destroyed the legitimacy of the ACA law, and the people will ultimately have their revenge!! Consequently, the odds are better than 300 million to 435 that Obamacare will fail!